


Just Knock

by Doitwriteaway



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, F/M, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 19:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12847614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doitwriteaway/pseuds/Doitwriteaway
Summary: Shaun and Lea both have a bad day at work. Lea decides that Shaun needs a distraction and takes him out to eat.





	Just Knock

**Author's Note:**

> Shaun and Lea's first kiss, by request. :)

            It took eleven sharp knocks on the door of apartment thirty-four before Lea answered. She came to the door wearing a paint-splattered sweatshirt and green cotton pajama pants, her dark hair pulled back with a rubber band. Her nonplussed expression quickly shifted into a smile once she registered who her visitor was.

            “Hello, Shaun,” she said, deadpan, “Halloween was yesterday. And I’m all out of candy.”

            Shaun looked past her shoulder, clenching and unclenching his hands. “Blunt abdominal trauma,” he said in a tight, agitated tone. “Multiple broken ribs and contusions across the chest and abdomen. The force and the deceleration of the collision caused her spleen to rupture. We could not identify the injury until we performed an ultrasound. She was hemorrhaging internally. We had to operate right away. We performed a splenectomy and her blood would not clot. She continued to hemorrhage.”

            “Shaun,” Lea stopped him, placing her hand on his arm. Her eyes were wide. “Hey, why don’t you come inside?” She ushered him into the apartment and he complied. She gently shut the door behind him.

            Shaun continued, beginning to pace. “The patient had hemophilia. By the time we administered adequate clotting factor to stem the bleeding, her blood pressure was bottoming out. She needed a transfusion. Afterwards her vitals began to normalize. The patient is stable now but her condition is dangerous. Doctor Melendez said I had to go home. I had to leave.”

            Lea listened patiently while Shaun spoke. When he finished, she said, “Shaun, that sounds incredibly stressful. Are you okay?”

            “I am okay,” Shaun said sharply, stopping in front of her. “My patient is not. But Doctor Melendez said I had to go home. I worked for thirty-four hours. I had to leave.”

            “Maybe it’s a good idea for you to take a break, you know?” Lea responded, her voice laced with concern.

            “I don’t need a break. I don’t need a break!” Shaun said, his voice rising.

            “Shaun, breathe!” Lea cried. “God, you look awful. You need some sleep.”

            “Would you be able to sleep if your patient had a high chance of fatal complications?” Shaun returned angrily.

            “I’m an art teacher, Shaun,” Lea responded, an edge of irritation creeping into her tone. Then her voice softened. “I have no idea what it must be like to go through what you’re going through. I’m sorry.”

            “It’s bad,” said Shaun, looking down at his interlaced fingers.

            Lea laughed ruefully. “Yeah, I got that,” she replied. “Okay. So. Let’s make a plan. If you’re not going to sleep, we have to do something to get your mind off of everything.”

            “My mind will not go off,” Shaun said.

            Lea chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I was thinking maybe we should get you something to eat. You said thirty-four hours… I know how you get super-focused. I bet you haven’t had much to eat.”

            “I haven’t,” Shaun admitted, his voice quieter.

            “Well,” Lea said, “let’s go, then.” She picked up her sneakers off the floor where she’d tossed them aside after getting home from work and tugged them on without untying the laces first. Then she grabbed her jacket and bag off of the coat stand and her keys out of the glass bowl on the side table. Shaun said nothing in response, but when she went out the door, he quickly followed behind.

            The car ride was quiet. Shaun fingered his seatbelt, worrying it between his fingers, and gazed up at the streetlights out the window as they flickered by. Lea gripped the steering wheel with both hands, her gaze practically boring through the windshield at the dark roads. When they stopped at a red light, she stifled a yawn. “I hate driving tired,” she murmured.

            “You’re wearing a seatbelt,” Shaun responded.

            “Yeah, I am,” Lea said.

            “Seatbelts are important,” Shaun replied insistently.

            “Very true,” Lea agreed placidly.

            “My patient wasn’t wearing a seatbelt,” Shaun said. “And the airbag malfunctioned. It was an old car. Her body was thrown against the steering wheel.”

            “That’s terrible,” Lea said quietly.

            Shaun said nothing in response, but continued to gaze at the passing lights. He rolled down the window, and fresh night air rushed into the vehicle. It blew his hair back from his face and cooled his cheeks. His tensed shoulders relaxed, almost imperceptibly.

            Finally, they pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot.

            “This is a lot more crowded than I expected for this time of night,” Lea remarked, holding the door for Shaun as he stumbled inside of the restaurant. His adrenaline was wearing off, making him clumsier. Squinting in the bright fluorescent light, Shaun’s eyes darted from the bright decorations on the wall to the line of people waiting to order to the bustling scene behind the cash register to the groups of people milling about the seating area. Finally his gaze settled on Lea.

            “I can’t think,” he sighed. “We should go.”

            “Don’t worry,” she responded, “I’ve got this. Just pick someplace for us to sit.”

            Shaun paused, considering, then nodded slowly. “Okay,” he decided. He turned and made a beeline for a small table in the back of the restaurant, away from the bulk of the shuffle. Lea went to go place their order.

            The line moved quickly, and soon she returned to the table bearing a tray loaded with food.

            “I didn’t know what you would want,” she explained, “but I didn’t want to stress you out with that giant menu. So I just got a few things.” She shrugged. “I figured I’d eat the rest. As you know, I stress eat, like, majorly.”

            “You’re stressed?” Shaun asked.

            Lea sat back, a small smile gracing her features for a moment before her expression turned serious once more. “Of course,” she said. “You showed up at my door in the middle of the night, practically traumatized.”

            “You’re worried about me,” Shaun commented, inspecting the food on the tray. He turned a sleeve of french fries around towards himself and took a bite. “I am a surgical resident. I had to treat a patient with complicated injuries. I have treated many patients before. Why would you be worried about me?”

            Lea rolled her eyes. “Because surgical resident or not, whatever happened at the hospital clearly affected you. And I care about you. Obviously.”

            Shaun halted mid-chew, looking up at Lea with wide blue-green eyes. She raised her eyebrows at his reaction, then quickly looked down at the table, as if suddenly interested by the text on a sandwich wrapper. He blushed slightly and glanced away, finishing his mouthful of food. Then he gathered together four more french fries and crammed them into his mouth.

            “So…” Lea said, “I’ve decided. I’m taking this burger.”

            Shaun nodded through a mouthful of fries. Lea observed that he had almost finished them. “Your love of french fries is duly noted,” she laughed.

            “I don’t normally eat this quickly,” he mused. There was a pause while he finished the fries. Then he sat back. “I must stress eat too,” he declared.

            Lea grinned and began unwrapping the hamburger. As he often did, Shaun watched her hands.

            “You have ink on your hands,” he commented.

            “Oh my God, don’t even get me started,” she said.

            “You usually say ‘don’t even get me started’ right before you start talking about something,” Shaun remarked.

            “Only sometimes. Well, most of the time,” Lea responded brightly. “My day was crazy. So what happened is--”

            “You’re doing it,” Shaun interrupted, a small smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. He pulled a side salad towards him and carefully removed the plastic lid. Then he began to eat the pieces of dry lettuce one by one with his fingers.

            Lea smiled at him. “Come on, Shaun, I’m trying to get your mind off of things. So,” she started again, “yesterday was Halloween, right? So all of the kids are either on a sugar high or crashing off a sugar high, and of course they’re all sleep deprived, too,” she began.

            “A ‘sugar high’ is not possible. Numerous studies have demonstrated that increased sugar consumption does not impact children’s behavior,” Shaun commented.

            Lea scoffed. “Yeah, well, you may be a doctor, but I’m a teacher. And I can definitely assure you that the sugar high is real, and every November first, it makes my life a living hell. So, anyways, the kids are all completely hyper, and of course I had the bright idea to start a calligraphy unit with the sixth graders today,” she said, shaking her head. Then she hurriedly added, “That last part was sarcasm. It was a terrible idea.”

            “Why?” Shaun asked curiously. He had finished the salad and was moving on to a container of chicken nuggets.

            “Because,” Lea explained, after finishing another bite, “Calligraphy requires precision and focus, and that’s a challenge for most middle schoolers on the best of days. Also, the calligraphy pens we have are _ancient_ and break easily, and the ink is water-based but it still stains, and if the kids aren’t paying attention, it gets _everywhere_. The students all have art shirts, of course, like t-shirts that they don’t mind getting paint and stuff on, but still, somehow they ended up leaving with the ink all over themselves. Like, on their faces.” She paused to drink her soda, then finished, “It was _chaos._ ”

            “That sounds difficult,” Shaun sympathized, thinking of pointers he’d gotten from Claire about ‘actively listening’ to Lea. He was somewhat miffed at the time - he did listen - but Claire’s suggestions usually did seem to yield encouraging results. He mirrored her, picking up his drink and sipping from the straw.

            “It gets worse,” Lea said dramatically. “So, later in the day, I get called out of my lunch break to go to the principal, and of course I’m freaking out, like I’m a kid again and I’m in trouble.” She laughed and added, “I don’t imagine you had much experience with that, Shaun.”

            “I did,” he contradicted her.

            Lea raised her eyebrows. “Really,” she said, “Huh. You don’t strike me as the type. I’d love to hear more about that someday.”

            Shaun hummed noncommittally in response and gazed into the distance above Lea’s shoulder, the perfect picture of a man with a font of enigmatic stories of childhood misbehavior beyond Lea’s wildest imaginings.

            Lea smiled and continued, “But anyways. I get to the office, and the principal is sitting there with two of my sixth graders, both of them covered in green ink. And this definitely wasn’t my green ink. So I asked her what was going on, like not in those words of course, but I asked her, and she explained to me that apparently some of the kids were trying to ‘do calligraphy’ by splitting open Sharpie markers and using bobby pins to write with the ink.” She rolled her eyes again, remembering the scene.

            “What!” Shaun exclaimed, laughing. “Why wouldn't they just use the markers?” He sat back in his chair and stimmed slightly, the smallest movement of his arms at his sides. Then he quieted. “Why did the principal ask you to come to the office?” he asked.

            “Because according to her, it was somehow my fault. I don't even know,” she returned.

            “How was it your fault?” he asked. “They were not in your classroom. You did not tell them to do it. Therefore it is not your fault.”

            “I know, right?” Lea agreed. “But my principal is an incredible bitch.”

            Shaun started slightly at the expletive, and Lea hurriedly apologized. “Sorry,” she said, “I know it’s not okay for me to say that. It’s just, I swear, she has it out for me. She completely hates me.”

            “That doesn’t make sense,” Shaun stated matter-of-factly. “People don't hate other people for no reason. There is always a cause.”

            “Yeah, well,” said Lea, somewhat defensively, “The _cause,_ Shaun, is that she’s terrible and mean. So, anyways. The principal asks _me_ to explain to these kids why what they were doing is wrong, and she is just laying it on so thick. Like this is the worst thing these kids could possibly be getting up to. I’m just standing there like, how is this my job? Like, I don’t want to tear into these kids because they were messing around with markers. I mean, it was a completely asinine thing for them to do, and clearly lacking any common sense, but still. The kids were totally freaked out! I’m thinking like, you are an educator, you should not intentionally be scaring these kids.” She paused to take a breath and a very large drink of her soda.

            “Do you want advice or support?” Shaun asked carefully.

            “ _Support_ , Shaun,” Lea said firmly, but there was humor in her tone. “And I’m not done.”

            “Okay. I’ll just stay quiet,” said Shaun smartly, returning his attention to his food.

            “Oh good, you’ve gone back to being just a little bit of an asshole,” Lea said, smiling. “You must be feeling better. I’m almost done, I promise. Okay. So what I did was, I said to the kids, ‘I admire your creativity. But it’s important to be responsible and aware of your surroundings when you make art. Good art often involves risks, but you need to be aware of them and you need to be aware of the potential consequences for your actions.’ And _oh my God_. That pissed off my principal. I mean, I think it was a totally reasonable thing to say.”

            “It was,” Shaun interjected.

            “Thank you!” Lea cried. “But she dismisses the kids, and then asks _me_ to stay in her office for a moment. And then she chews me out about discipline and undermining her and on and on and on.” She sighed loudly.

            Shaun sat quietly, chewing and considering her words. Then he spoke. “You are a good teacher,” he said simply.

            Lea shrugged self consciously. “Thanks, Shaun,” she said. “I mean, I try…”

            “You are,” Shaun said. “You are patient and fair.”

            “That means a lot,” Lea said, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Coming from you,” she added. “The brutal honesty guy.”

            Shaun hummed and blinked sleepily. “I’m finished stress eating,” he said. Then a shadow crossed his face. “Pulmonary sepsis,” he ruminated. “Or abdominal sepsis. Or...” he trailed off into a yawn. His brow furrowed in slight confusion as though he had lost his worried train of thought and was searching for where to pick up again.

            Lea stifled a small smile at his ruffled appearance. “Aw, damn,” she said. “I thought I’d distracted you.”

            “You did,” Shaun replied. “But I perseverate, which means I keep thinking about things.”

            “It’s okay,” she said, smiling softly. “It’s cool. Not a lot of people do that very well. I’m actually kind of jealous. That kind of focus is definitely a skill. Just not when it’s keeping you awake during your ten hour break between thirty hour shifts. Speaking of which, we should go. I should get you home.”

            “I can’t sleep,” Shaun insisted.

            “Yeah, well, we can go back and watch TV on that ridiculous television of yours or something. Actually, I’m probably going to pass right out, and you can watch TV,” Lea said, standing and zipping her jacket.

            “Okay,” Shaun said, gathering their trash together on the tray with unusually graceless movements. They moved from the white flourescent light of the restaurant into navy-denim darkness.

            The drive home was the low whirr of the road and the rush of clean air through the open window and lights blinking by in the dark. Lea once again gripped the steering wheel and focused on driving. Shaun blinked sleepily and then allowed his eyes to flutter closed, basking in the wonderful feeling of the cool air rushing across his face. It was, he decided, like the feeling of climbing into a freshly made bed with clean sheets, only magnified, like that feeling happening over and over again. The smell of San Jose nighttime plus Lea was something like lavender. His head nodded against his chest.

            When Lea pulled into her parking spot in the garage at their apartment building, she turned off the car and slumped against the steering wheel. “Ugh, I’m exhausted,” she groaned. “Not that I didn’t enjoy this adventure with you, Shaun, but we both have to go to --”

            She turned her head to look at Shaun and stopped mid sentence. The rigid tension in his body had relaxed. His eyes were closed, his head was cradled in the curve of the seatbelt, and his fingers were curled loosely, his hands resting in his lap. His chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm.

            Lea sat up. She reached out a hand to Shaun’s shoulder to gently shake him awake, but hesitated as she registered the unusual paleness of his skin and the purple, bruise-like dark circles under his eyes. She pulled back her hand and sighed. It would be alright if she let Shaun sleep, just for a little while. The garage was passcode protected and well lit, so she felt safe enough staying in the car.

            Lea relaxed in her seat and willed her eyes to stay open. Her mind drifted back to Shaun. Sleep softened all of his edges, the sharp defenses he’d built up to protect himself from a hostile world. Sleep revealed the snowflake-delicate splay of his eyelashes, the natural curve of his bottom lip when he relaxed, the way his dark hair fanned out across his forehead if not tamed into place with water and a comb. She felt the urge to reach out again and brush it into place, but resisted the impulse. Instead, she fumbled in her coat pocket and pulled out her phone, checking the time. She would just wait a little bit longer.

            Lea tucked her phone back into her pocket and yawned so widely that her jaw cracked; she shuddered slightly at the noise. She wondered if she should set an alarm for when to wake Shaun, but decided against it. Better to wake him gently then startle him out of sleep with a blaring loud noise. She’d just give him half an hour, just keep checking the time on her phone. But how to know when to check the time? She would just have to count.

_One, two, three, four, five…_ Her eyelids slid shut, and she rested her head against the cool glass of the side window. _Three… four… five… six…_ She blinked sleepily. The parking structure was above ground, and there was a rectangular space between various concrete planes where Lea could see a dark blue sliver of sky and the captivating curve of the moon. What had she been doing, counting? What had she been counting? Surely if she couldn’t remember, it couldn’t be that important. And with this self-vindicating thought, Lea slid into sleep.

            Lea startled into consciousness with the sound of jackhammer-loud knocking right next to her face. She scrambled to sit up, disoriented, and was shocked to find her landlord Armen’s face inches from her own, framed in the driver’s-side window of her car. “What the hell? Armen?” she cried, wincing as the unforgiving yellow light of dawn hurt her unadjusted eyes.

            “Oh good, you’re alive,” he said gruffly. He started to turn as if to go, but stopped mid-turn and squinted past Lea into the car. “Is that Murphy? The weird guy from thirty-three?” he asked incredulously.

            “Well --” Lea began, but Armen cut her off.

            “I do not want to know. Just don’t sleep in your car! Are you crazy? At least not in my garage. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. _Whatever_ it is you’re doing, do it inside!” With that comment, he stalked away.

            “We’re just sleeping!” Lea called after him. “In the -- in the car…” she trailed off, pushing a hand through her screwed-up hair. The rubber band had come out in the night, and her dark brown hair was tangled from a fitful few hours of trying to get comfortable sleeping upright against a glass window.

            “I do not want to know!” Armen replied loudly, without turning around.

            Lea sighed heavily and looked over at her passenger. She was surprised to see that Shaun was fully awake, and apart from a slight puffiness around his eyes that gave him away, it was difficult to tell that he’d just been suddenly woken by his angry landlord after sleeping for four hours in a car. “It’s morning,” Shaun said. “We should go inside.”

            “Yeah,” Lea agreed, once again tugging her hand through her hair. Guilt from allowing herself to fall asleep and depriving them both of a proper night’s rest weighed on her, and in her ears Shaun’s comment sounded like an accusation. She started the car to roll up the passenger-side window before turning it off again and wearily extracting herself from the vehicle.

            Shaun and Lea rode the elevator in silence. Lea silently berated herself, while Shaun struggled to recalibrate his mind to being awake and internally scripted how he would tell Claire about the night’s adventure when he got to work. “Lea and I slept together in her car” would certainly get a rise out of Claire, Shaun mused, but given the implications it might not be fair to Lea.

            Finally they ended up back in the hallway between their apartments. “Goodbye,” Shaun said, walking past Lea and heading to his door. There probably wasn’t much time left to sleep, but he had a decent enough chunk of time for watching the Weather Channel in bed.

            “Wait! Shaun,” she called after him. He turned and walked back over to her, waiting patiently.

            “I’m sorry for falling asleep in the car,” she said, nervously fiddling with the edges of her pockets with both hands. “I saw you had fallen asleep but I didn’t want to wake you right away because I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to get back to sleep once you were woken up, and you just looked so sweet, I mean, no, shit, I mean tired -- but anyways, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for keeping you out so late and telling you that overly long story about pointless shit that doesn’t even matter, when, oh my God, you almost had someone die on the operating table --”

            “It matters,” Shaun interrupted her.

            Lea froze, her hazel eyes widening in surprise. Shaun met them calmly.

            “I liked going with you last night,” he continued. “You’re distracting. And I was hungry, and you bought me food.”

            “I’m distracting… you mean like my story distracted you?” Lea breathed, hardly daring to hope that he’d meant something more.

            “Your story did distract me from thinking about my patient,” Shaun replied. “You’re always distracting to me.”

            “Oh, Shaun,” Lea said softly, and finally gave in to the impulse to brush his hair back off of his forehead, which she completed in a short, self-conscious movement. He relaxed slightly at her touch. Emboldened by his positive response, Lea moved closer to Shaun, as if meaning to hug him, but she stopped short of putting her arms around him. Something felt different than it usually did. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, her mind helpfully supplied.

            “You’re very close,” Shaun breathed.

            Lea swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. Shaun’s voice was magnetic, and the way he spoke, he sounded pleased.

            “Your heart rate has increased, you’re breathing shallowly, and you’re very close but you aren’t touching me,” Shaun listed off quickly, as though summarizing the available evidence for solving a puzzle. Then he paused, his eyes widening. “Are you going to kiss me?” he asked.

            “Do you want me to?” Lea asked carefully. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

            Shaun had been truthful about Lea’s propensity to distract him. All thoughts of the Weather Channel had been wiped out of his mind. Instead, frantic and conflicting images and feelings clamored for his attention. His face was flushed and his hands were sweating, clenched into fists at his sides.

            Of course he imagined kissing Lea. He had imagined it many times before. And when he imagined it, her lips were soft and her hands were gentle and her body pressed against his until he could feel all of the little movements that she made in response to him. But then again that was his imagining, and he had to contend with what reality had shown him, what Colleen and her group of friends had shown him, that love and romance and sex were hard and painful power plays where he, in his state of wanting, would always face humiliation and loss because his opponent did not want him, too. He glanced around the hallway, feeling nauseous and exposed.

            “We should go inside,” Shaun said.

            Lea took several steps back from until her hand was on her door handle, blushing bright red. “Oh, of- of course,” she stammered, her other hand rummaging frantically in her pocket for her keys. She located them and turned, fumbling with the lock. “Goodbye, Shaun,” she rushed out.

            Shaun cocked his head slightly to the side in confusion. Just as Lea managed to get the door open, he realized that she’d interpreted his statement to mean what he usually meant when he said it: that they should each go back inside their own apartment. “We should go inside together,” he clarified.

            She stopped. “What? Shaun, you can come in, but you’re being confusing,” she said, sounding more than a little exasperated.

            Shaun persevered. He followed Lea into her apartment and hurriedly closed the door. “I have made a decision,” he announced. “You should kiss me.” Then he waited, standing rigidly, gaze diffuse, in much the same posture as if he were simply waiting at the bus stop.

            “Oh my God, Shaun,” Lea said, grinning, and kissed him.

            She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it, which might have explained the slight unsteadiness of it, like the kiss was a coin tossed in the air. She steadied herself with a hand on his arm and pressed her lips firmly against his, mirroring his decisiveness, the click of a shutter, the flashbulb bursting. It was short and hot and bright. The end result was indelible as a photograph.

            Shaun thought: kissing Lea was vanilla soft serve on a hot summer day, the pure relief of honored trust.

            Lea thought: kissing Shaun was a comfortable danger, like jumping into the ocean from a tall cliff the way she and her brothers used to when they were kids. It was exactly the right way that a first kiss should feel.

            Then Lea stepped back and they assessed each other. Shaun looked dazed at first, then broke into a smile the likes of which Lea had only seen before in connection with a particularly impressive football play. Lea appeared considerably more relaxed than before they kissed, Shaun thought, and he filed this information away for future use. They stood for a moment in silence, surrounded by the prosaic noises of the apartment: the refrigerator running, the air conditioner rattling, the underlying hum that accompanied life in a large building.

            Suddenly, a loud electronic beeping broke the silence. Lea jumped slightly but Shaun simply slid his hand into his pocket and silenced the alarm on his phone, unfazed. “I need my jumprope,” he said, and moved past Lea to the door.

            “Hey, Shaun,” she called after him. When he looked back over his shoulder at her, she was grinning. “If you ever need a friend again, like for whatever reason,” she said, “just knock.”

            “Okay,” he replied. He headed home to get ready with a warmth in his core and a pleasant buzzing in his limbs. Whatever the situation was at the hospital when he returned, he felt calm and ready to face it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading my story! This was harder for me to write than the first story I published. I figured it would be a good exercise to finish it as best as I could and then get some feedback. So I would really appreciate any and all feedback, positive and negative.
> 
> Changes: I'm now spelling Lea's name correctly, which is good. Also, I think I have her hair color down now, too. (I don't know why my brain thought she was blonde until Apple.) Thanks for bearing with me on that.
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


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